[nos-bbs] JNOS & tactical calls

Sun Apr 17 11:19:09 EDT 2011

Hi FiSH,

The reasoning behind having an ftpusers entry for each known user was to
give each user their own directory area, essentially a "home directory." But
I see now that that was kind of a stupid idea. Because, what's the user
gonna do with it? Upload files that only he or she can download again?

Thanks for asking the question, thus causing me to re-read the writeup on
ftpusers and thereby understand what those directories are really for!

Michael KI6TYV

(P.S. I failed to "reply all" to your earlier post, so I'm posting our
"mini-thread" back to the list to document the exchange.)

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 12:01 AM, FiSH <fish810 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I don't know why the area prompt reappeared.  But it might have something
> to do with having the user already defined in ftpusers.  Why do you want to
> do that??  We defined only our sysops in ftpusers and all other users just
> get the default perms from univperms.
>
> Good luck,
> FiSH
>
>
>
>
> Save a life...
> Be The Match
> Click here <http://www.marrow.org/> to find out how
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Michael Curry <dgspotman at gmail.com>
> *To:* FiSH <fish810 at yahoo.com>
> *Sent:* Sat, April 16, 2011 9:25:54 PM
>
> *Subject:* Re: [nos-bbs] JNOS & tactical calls
>
> Aha, I get it now... Thanks!
>
> Not that it affects the operation of Outpost, but I'm still a little
> curious why the Area prompt comes back on. Maybe it's some bug that's
> triggered because the interaction fails with expert mode off.
>
> I'll play with it some more.
>
> Michael KI6TYV
>
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 9:15 PM, FiSH <fish810 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Ahh no.  If I recall correctly, the "expert" mode is controlled by a bit
>> in the permissions word.  We set that bit in our univperms value and all new
>> users are set to "expert" mode by default.
>>
>> Hope that clears things up a bit.
>>
>> FiSH
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Save a life...
>> Be The Match
>> Click here <http://www.marrow.org/> to find out how
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Michael Fox - N6MEF <n6mef at mefox.org>
>> *To:* TAPR xNOS Mailing List <nos-bbs at tapr.org>
>> *Sent:* Sat, April 16, 2011 5:15:56 PM
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: [nos-bbs] JNOS & tactical calls
>>
>> Fish,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think there’s something missing here.  You explained the MBX_AREA_PROMPT
>> and the MBX_MORE_PROMPT but didn’t indicate how to turn off the long prompts
>> (i.e. turn on expert prompts).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I know we don’t get that by default, so you must have one more #define
>> statement in there, yes?
>>
>>
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* nos-bbs-bounces at tapr.org [mailto:nos-bbs-bounces at tapr.org] *On
>> Behalf Of *Michael Curry
>> *Sent:* Saturday, April 16, 2011 9:41 AM
>> *To:* TAPR xNOS Mailing List
>> *Subject:* Re: [nos-bbs] JNOS & tactical calls
>>
>>
>>
>> FiSH K6FSH wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Look in config.h for MBX_AREA_PROMPT and MBX_MORE_PROMPT.  They should be
>> DEFINEd by default for the "old" behavior.  To get the behavior that you
>> want, they both should be UNDEFINEd after or instead of the DEFINE.  And
>> this only applies to JNOS 2.0i and later versions.
>>
>>
>>
>> Undefining MBX_AREA_PROMPT and MBX_MORE_PROMPT has no effect on users
>> (calls) that are already known to jnos (they have an entry in users.dat).
>>  But when a NEW user connects, jnos should automatically create that new
>> user with the desired preferences, including the one that turns off "The
>> alphabet-soup prompt".
>>
>>
>> Hi FiSH,
>>
>> It took until this morning for me to get back to playing with this, and I
>> wanted to report my findings -- you might find them interesting.
>>
>>
>> I rebuilt JNOS with of the following preprocessor directives set as
>> shown -- each with a sense opposite to the sense they had in the stock
>> config.h file:
>>
>> -----------
>> #define MBX_TAC_CALLCHECK
>> #undef MBX_AREA_PROMPT
>> #undef MBX_MORE_PROMPT
>> ----------
>>
>> On the intial Outpost connect from a tactical callsign that has an entry
>> in ftpusers ("25A25" in this case), but no entry in users.dat, I see the
>> following:
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> [JNOS-2.0i-B2FHIM$]
>> You have 0 messages.
>> Current msg# 0.
>> ?,A,B,C,CONV,D,E,F,H,I,IH,IP,J,K,L,M,N,NR,O,P,PI,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Z >
>>
>> LM
>> No messages
>> Current msg# 0.
>> ?,A,B,C,CONV,D,E,F,H,I,IH,IP,J,K,L,M,N,NR,O,P,PI,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Z >
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> and the interaction wedges because, although the area prompt (and
>> presumably the more prompt) are off, the "alphabet soup prompt" is still in
>> force. According to the Outpost page on JNOS: 'The JNOS BBS prompt picks up
>> the last message ID that was read as part of the prompt.  Outpost will use
>> the ") >" prompt sequence as the JNOS prompt.'
>>
>>
>>
>> After this incomplete interaction, the automagically-created entry for
>> 25A25 in users.dat looks like:
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> 25a25 0 M0 A     P CA
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> The "0" in the timestamp field looks a little suspicious, but I'm guessing
>> it's the result of the interaction not actually going to completion. I
>> believe I aborted it from the Outpost Packet Session Manager.
>>
>>
>>
>> "Okay, fine," (I sez to myself) "so every Tactical Callsign needs to sign
>> on once manually to set expert mode. Not a huge deal."
>>
>>
>>
>> (Actually over the longer term it *could* be a somewhat big deal,
>> depending on how many tactical calls we end up with, but I can get into the
>> code and figure out what needs to be done. For now, I can live with it.)
>>
>>
>>
>> So I go ahead and log in manually to set expert mode for 25A25:
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> [JNOS-2.0i-B2FHIM$]
>> You have 0 messages.
>> Area: 25a25 Current msg# 0.
>> ?,A,B,C,CONV,D,E,F,H,I,IH,IP,J,K,L,M,N,NR,O,P,PI,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Z >
>>
>> x
>>
>> Area: 25a25 (#0) >
>>
>> lm
>>
>> No messages
>> Area: 25a25 (#0) >
>>
>> b
>>
>> Thank you 25a25, for calling n6orc JNOS.
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> "Huh? So why is the Area prompt back on now? Oh... I guess it must be that
>> 'A' in the users.dat record..."
>>
>>
>>
>> Now the users.dat entry for 25A25 looks like:
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> 25a25 1302968588 M0   A X   P -n -h -e CA
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> I'm guessing that that "M0" is the setting for the "More prompt," and is
>> the result of #undef-ing MBX_MORE_PROMPT, which is the compiled-in setting
>> equivalent to having manually issued the BBS command "XM 0" ... (Right?)
>>
>>
>>
>> (Maybe you see now why I was wishing for some definitive documentation on
>> the content/layout of users.dat records... :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> Anyway, the good news is that, even with the Area prompt on, as long as
>> the Alphabet Soup prompt is off, Outpost is happy. So that's it for now,
>> we're off to integration testing this afternoon!
>>
>>
>>
>> 73, Michael KI6TYV
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Remember, Comrades: Life is a series of choices -- all of which will be
> made for you by Central Committee.
>

-- 
Remember, Comrades: Life is a series of choices -- all of which will be made
for you by Central Committee.
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